I Kiss Happiness Into Your Lips
by Catheryne
Summary: Chuck/Blair. They were young, beautiful, married and in love. Chuck and Blair had everything in the world, except what they wanted the most. Sequel to Against the Dying of the Light
1. Chapter 1

**I Kiss Happiness into Your Lips**

Sequel to Against the Dying of the Light. However, if you have not read that story, there is enough background in this one that you will not be too lost.

Pairing: Chuck/Blair

Summary: They were young, beautiful, married and in love. Chuck and Blair had everything in the world, except what they wanted the most.

AN: This title was taken from Pablo Neruda's Sonnet LXXVIII from a Hundred Love Sonnets. If you have the time, do read the poem. You will be amazed at how much it could sound like something Chuck would say to Blair, especially in the context of these two stories. This sequel will only be about three to four parts long.

**Part 1**

Blair Waldorf Bass was the picture of perfection. Chuck leaned back in his seat at the back of the limo and watched the clip on the television he had installed in the vehicle for just this reason. When her charity gala was featured on the nightly news, Blair was articulate, beautiful, flawless.

In her black Valentino, she appeared sleek and slim, and he wondered again how she could ever have thought that she had problems with her weight. It look a long time, a lot of attention, utter devotion until he convinced her there was never any need to slim down.

Perfect round pearls lined her neck and graced her ears as she talked about the orphanage that was the beneficiary of her event.

Blair Waldorf Bass—the toast of Manhattan society. She was rich, powerful and had everything. Young women her age envied her life, and she carried herself like royalty.

And he was the only one who knew about the tears she shed late at night, when they were in bed, blanketed by the pitch black night. When she cried, she refused to let him turn on the light.

Every morning when she woke up, she helped him into his suit so he could go to work, and she slipped into one of her expensive dresses and searched for a cause.

One day, she arrived home after he did, with Baby following after her while she pushed Serena's daughters in their twin baby carriages. There had been such a sparkle in her eyes, and he admitted that his heart leapt at the sight of his young wife looking after the toddlers.

But it had been a discussion long over, and revisiting it was revisiting their one biggest pain.

He did not comment on it, and it became more and more often. Blair would take home Serena and Dan's daughters are have them sleep over. She turned one of the guest rooms into a bedroom for the girls. And his stepsister found nothing wrong with the babies spending so much time with their godmother.

She and Dan were trying again, for a boy this time.

That made him wince, and he hoped Blair never heard that.

There were many things that he hoped Blair never found out. But often there was no hiding the little things in their little world. Earlier that afternoon, he received a visit from a friend, and he owed him, so he helped him. Nate Archibald helped him on the road to sobriety, and it was a debt he would always hold.

"Mr Bass, Mr Archibald is here for you."

He pressed the intercom button and said, "Send him in."

Nate strolled into the room, looking desolate as he always did, unshaven and unkempt. "She's pregnant."

Chuck's gaze shot up to meet Nate's. He had developed such a thirst for that word for the last few years that it called his attention immediately. "Congratulations," he drawled. His gut twisted at the news. He swallowed.

"We don't want a kid," Nate continued. He ran his fingers through his hair. Chuck's best friend had only recently joined a law firm, and Vanessa was showing her first exhibit in a week. "I need you to make the arrangements."

Chuck gritted his teeth, but did not ask why it could not be Nate who would pick up the phone and schedule his own appointment. "Consider it done."

Nate left his office and Chuck was left staring at the door even after it shut. There was no way he could do more work, not anymore. Instead, he called for the limo and called it a day. And he watched the taped interview of her charity ball from the back of the vehicle because after that conversation with Nate, hers was the only face he needed to see.

He arrived home to find the lights dimmed. His head immediately turned to the left, towards the twins' makeshift bedroom. Chuck pushed the door open and saw the Humphrey girls asleep in their beds. Between the two beds slept Baby, who was now a large dog he needed to grunt to carry. Chuck turned and looked for his wife. He found her sitting in her walk-in closet, staring at the dim reflection of herself in the mirrors surrounding the room.

"Hey," he said softly. "What are you doing here in the dark?"

She did not look up at him, but when he sat beside her she leaned her head on his shoulder. "This will be the nursery, right?" she said softly. "That's what we talked about."

"Yes," he answered. A long time ago, when she was taking the hormone pills and they thought there was such hope.

She nodded. "I wanted to be sure. It's been so long."

It had been a long time since she stopped, because he begged her to stop. The pills had made their lives a living hell, with the side effects it gave her—the nausea, the dizziness, the way she threw up more than she did during her bout with bulimia.

And despite how impossible it was, he held on to one promise to her. "It will happen, Blair."

He watched her reflection, so he knew that a tear slid down her cheek. "I'm so tired, Chuck," she breathed. "It's so exhausting hoping for a miracle."

But they were here, in this very place, together like this, because he had put his faith in a miracle, and they were willing to work on it. She clutched at his arm and he saw the glint of their platinum wedding band on her finger. "It will be better, Blair. You'll see. We keep trying," he teased, "and I'm enjoying trying. You're not getting bored trying, are you?" he asked in an effort to lighten the mood. "I must be losing my touch."

She stared at their reflection in silence. He didn't move. Sometimes, this silence was the most beneficial. Sometimes letting her cry was the catharsis they both needed. Serena and Dan were on their way to making a third baby on Dan's pathetic salary from the magazine. Nate and Vanessa were getting rid of theirs to salvage the careers only just getting started and a relationship already rocky to begin with.

And he was here, with a perfect wife that New York envied, wanting a baby so much to no avail. Life was a fucking bitch sometimes.

But he never let her see that.

In front of Blair, the only thing that left his mouth was hope. With Blair, there was no call to question miracles.

Her eyes were full of sorrow, and to those who knew to look, even the briefest of interviews on tv captured her loneliness.

Her hand on his arm moved up and down. His eyes followed the rise and fall of the ring. "There's nothing wrong with you," she said, as if in epiphany. He ached to remind her that there was nothing wrong with her either, but she would shoot him down with a sheet of paper that told him about the damage her bulimia had wrecked on her hormones. "Chuck, we can get a surrogate," she said, latching on to the idea like it was the most brilliant one she had come up with. "Or knock someone up. I won't complain," she promised, and his heart ached at the fervor in her eyes. "You deserve a family."

The idea was so preposterous, but she appeared so sold, like she had resolved the problem they had had for years. Chuck gently said, "I have a family."

And he did. A long time ago he had no one, and then he admitted to himself that Blair was his family. And she had held his hand when he accepted that the van der Woodsens were also his.

"You want a baby. You deserve a baby."

He turned away from the reflection and looked down at her. And she met his eyes. He wished he could tell her he did not want one, so she would not feel the pressure or be overwhelmed with guilt. But no matter how much he loved her, he could not bring himself to tell this particular lie. Chuck brushed his thumb on her chin, and she gave a small smile, the way she often responded to his gesture of affection. "I want yours," he enunciated.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and her tears rained down her cheeks. "Vanessa told Dan, you know," she said softly. "Dan told Serena so now I know." Her voice hitched in her throat. "I deserve a baby more than they do!" she cried. "You know, Chuck." Her eyes were brilliant with furious tears. "You know!" And she was sobbing, and he could do nothing but hold her tight. "Why do they get one and we don't? They don't even want one."

She was broken, and he held her even tighter to make sure she didn't shatter. Blair cried into his shirt, loud, gasping sobs that she would never have done before college, when she used to hold in her pain and let it go by hurting herself. But sometimes, God, sometimes when this was what the pain was about, he wished she would not be as open, because it tore him apart as much as it did her.

"We're fine," he said hoarsely, rocking her body against his. "We're fine."

He was the king, and she was the queen, and they lived in a tower so high that they could look over their kingdom every night, he thought as he carried her out of the closet and passed by the tall glass windows on the way to their bed. They were Chuck and Blair, and Manhattan envied them. They were young, beautiful, married and in love. They could go anywhere in the world and buy everything they wanted.

He held her as she sobbed herself to sleep. He kept his eyes open the entire night. If there was ever any night when there was a possibility for her to slip back into the arms of the demons they had escaped long ago, this was it. And that would never happen again.

The faint mewling sounds that came from his side interrupted his trance. Chuck rose to pick up the baby monitor before it woke Blair. He padded towards the twins' room and picked up the crying girl. "Heather, is that you?" He didn't even know how to tell the kids apart, and Blair could do it in a heartbeat.

The baby buried her face into the crook of his neck and calmed at the warmth of his body. Chuck took a deep breath and smelled the baby powder. He closed his eyes. He wanted a kid. He wanted it so much.

He found himself humming a song he had heard Blair sing to the girls. Chuck sat on the white rocking chair that had purchased for the room. And slowly, he rocked.

Chuck woke up to find her watching him hold the baby. Chuck drew a deep breath, because he had never once wanted her to see him interact with Serena's children. When he held the girls, there was no way he could make her believe that it didn't break his heart every single time their own test came out negative.

"Blair—"

She gave him a tight smile, then reached for Heather, carried her to the bed. Blair returned to him and held out her hand. He took it and kissed her wrist. "Come on, Chuck. Sleep on the bed. You're going to get a crick on your neck if you sleep there the whole night."

Chuck moistened his lips, waiting for her to say anything else. Ask him how it felt to hold the baby. Tell him that he should have woken her.

There was nothing.

She loosened her hold on his hand. Chuck frowned, "Aren't you coming?"

"You go ahead," she replied faintly.

That was not happening ever again, he thought. The demons visited when you're alone. That was why the moment Nate left him, he packed up and went home to her. The demons would not find them alone again in times like these. He grasped her hand, then picked up the baby monitor. "We're going to bed. They'll be fine."

They'll be fine.

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

AN: You guys never cease to amaze me by how nice you have been. It makes it worth it that during writing, emotions overwhelm me and I need to stop to collect myself. Here's Blair's POV, including some memories.

**Part 2**

She leaned her forehead against the dark tinted windows of the limo, her shoulders slumped, her fingers scratching gently on the top of Baby's head on her lap. Inside their apartment, inside their limo, it was an entirely different world where Blair Waldorf Bass did not need to be perfect. There was no need to hide, and she did not need the calm smile that constantly graced her lips on the society pages.

When she fell in love with Chuck Bass… Blair shook her head. It was impossible to tell when she loved him, so she amended. When she first said it out loud, to him, he had refused to acknowledge that he felt it too. And she was masochist because it did not break her. When she fell in love with Chuck Bass she knew the road would not be easy. He had refused her and pushed her away, stuck a dagger in her gut every time he told her he did not love her. And she had stayed.

But this was not the payment she wanted—this life she seemed to have cursed him with.

Anyone who ever said, all those years ago, when they were teenagers in the Upper East Side, that she could do so much better. They were insane. And so so very wrong.

If she did not think he was perfect, she would not have agreed when on her last year of college, he came to her with one request. To break the standing engagement they had for the last four years, and cut it short by two—to get married before she finished, even if the deal was that she had to graduate first, work at least two years.

"I'm an ass," he had declared, his voice so deep and smooth the way she loved it that she didn't even care too much that he was putting himself down. "I fully acknowledge that this is such an asshole thing for me to do."

But she loved him, and he kissed her hand so wonderfully butterflies burst fluttering in her stomach until she felt they would spill flying out of her mouth. And so she said the only thing she could. "If you admit you lose this deal."

He had broken into grateful relief, and pressed a kiss on her nose. "I forfeit." Her eyes had rolled back in her head in the sheer pleasure of the sound, and he had laughed softly. "You like that, don't you?"

And she had given him a saucy smirk and warned, "You do know you would be saying that every day of your life when we do this."

He told her exactly that he did, and Blair Waldorf became, out of schedule, a Bass. And finally, the entire world knew she was his family.

She was in senior year when she married Chuck Bass. She was a college celebrity. She was Blair Waldorf Bass and still she stayed in her little apartment, walked to her classes and aced her courses. When the limo rolled to the front of the building where she had been sitting on the steps, people turned and craned their necks to see.

It had been his birthday then and Chuck stopped by to take her to dinner for their private celebration. Afterwards, he took her back to her apartment. He had sprung it at her as if she didn't expect it. But she did. They had been so happy and it had only a matter of time when he put his finger on the only thing missing from their lives.

"I want a baby," he had choked into her ear, when he spent himself inside her late that night, in her twin bed. He gripped tightly to her hips, and she had thrown her head back to cry out her release.

And afterwards, she had laid her cheek against his moist shoulder, then nuzzled her nose against his neck. "You didn't need to ask," she had said, the same way she responded to his proposal two years before.

She drew in a sharp breath, straightened in her seat. Baby jerked up his head and blinked up at her in his silent question. She smiled at the dog and shook her head. "It's okay, Baby. There's nothing wrong."

Not even if the six months afterwards had been a living hell of uncertainty and pain. Dark circular spots had appeared on her satin skirt when she hung her head, and the doctor told them that the hormone therapy did not work.

She had not apologized to him. Instead, she looked down at her fisted hands and willed her palms to bleed, told her nails to cut through skin and punish muscle until the only pain she would feel was the one she caused herself. She was a Waldorf and then she was a Bass. No one could hurt her except herself. And then he was there before her, prying her hands open so he could intertwine their fingers.

"Blair," he had said in that voice she loved so much.

But she had not looked, had not met his eyes. He loved her, and she would remember when he loved her. The sooner she looked at him, the sooner she would see.

She didn't want to see.

"Look at me," he had demanded. And she had shaken her head so fiercely she could swear her teardrops landed so far apart from each other.

She had squeezed her eyes even tighter. There was no way she was prepared to lose the love in his eyes. She wished, she prayed, he would leave her then. She wished he would leave the way he did when he found out she wanted to terminate the pregnancy she had in high school. If he left, she would not need to see what would be missing.

And then he was kissing her, and a soft sob escaped her lips. Right there, in the doctor's office, Chuck Bass was kissing her, and his lips were hard and searching and anxious.

"This is not what will tear us apart," he had said into her hair.

His words gave her the strength to open her eyes. And there had been no judgment, no anger, no regret in the way he looked at her. And she loved him and she would make him happy. Whatever it took.

"I'll fix it," she had promised him. "I'll find a way. I'll make you happy."

And she did. Every day, he had told her. But her mind had closed off the words of reassurance.

Blair released a shuddering breath. The Labrador retriever barked at her. She spotted the black stretch towncar stop in front of the clinic. Nate stepped off the car and slid on his sunglasses, then held out his hand to Vanessa. Her friends entered the clinic, with Nate's arm around his girlfriend's waist.

Blair turned her face away and told the driver to take her home.

Her phone rang when she pushed the door open. Baby ran into the apartment before she could even enter. Blair held the brown paper bag close to her chest and she walked to twins' bedroom, then placed her purchases inside the small drawer that Chuck never checked. She tore open one box and drew out the needle and syringe.

She hastily wiped at her tears. Blair winced as the needle disappeared under her skin, and she pushed the liquid into her vein. Carefully, she drew out the needle and hissed. She dropped the discarded applicator into its box, then with one hand tore a piece of cotton ball and pressed it on the wound.

Miracles were well and good, but after two years of nothingness, Blair would not leave their happiness to chance.

Chuck had been too quick to shoot down the idea of the stronger batch, the experimental hormone therapy. When she had gotten sick from the pills, he had demanded she stop. But it was her body that had the problem, not his. It was hers to fix, not his to decide.

Blair trembled at the initial surge of nausea that came almost instantaneously. She lay down on her back on the small pink bed, then closed her eyes. Her phone rang. She forced her knees to cooperate as she reached for her bag. She broke into cold sweat, and she felt a hot flush go through her body.

"Chuck," she breathed.

"How are you doing, Waldorf?"

And she knew he wasn't calling for her. He knew when Nate would do it. He was calling because he was upset, and when he was bothered he reached out to her. "I'm fine. Nothing to do here."

"Why don't I pick you up? I'm ten minutes away," he suggested, and she knew he needed her.

"Sure," she answered. "I'll go and change right now." Blair needed to wear one of her mother's long sleeved original creations.

Blair hung up the phone and dropped it inside her bag. The phone clattered to the floor, dislodging the battery. She blinked at it in confusion. She looked up at the mirror and then grasped for the wall, losing her balance. She looked down at the floor and frowned. She had lost her depth perception, for a moment, and it left her cold with panic.

The hormone pills had given her nausea and dizziness, but never to the extent of this. Her world whirled around her.

She had only been taking the injections for two weeks.

Blair pulled herself up towards the bathroom and fumbled with the doorknob. She felt the touch of cold metal under her skin, and she released a breath of relief. She tried to close her hand around the knob but failed to grasp it. Her hand slipped. When the bathroom door did not open, she stumbled towards the one she shared with Chuck.

The door was not closed and she felt the bile rising in her throat. Blair rested her arms on the marble sink, then leaned over and heaved.

The sound brought back her nightmares, and she wept as she heaved again.

The landline was ringing now, and she suspected he had tried to call her cell and found it dead. The ringing was insistent, and she wanted to answer it. She wanted to take his call, if only to tell him to come. Blair pushed away from the sink and made her way out of the bathroom.

And she found herself falling down to the tiles.

Blair wanted to pull herself up, to crawl, but her muscles were liquid and her limbs were limp. She rolled to her side and found herself getting sick on the bathroom floor. She gagged at the scent of her own vomit.

"Blair?" she heard his voice when the machine picked up. "I'm outside."

Her eyes fluttered closed.

"Blair!"

She opened her eyes, with no idea how much time had passed. It could not have been long. Chuck was not a guy to wait. The door of their apartment shut.

"Blair, where are you?"

And then he was beside her, and he was pulling her up off the floor, her hair out of the congealed vomit that she could not roll away from.

"I'm sorry," she choked. "I wasn't trying. I swear," she said, afraid that he would think that even after everything he had done, she was uncontrollable enough that she sank back into her bulimia.

"I know."

He lifted her up into his arms and she closed her eyes as the movement made her dizzier. He had half run to the elevator and she knew that she would be fine. Chuck was here, and he found her, and she would be okay.

When she woke up, he sat beside her tracing the puncture wound on her arm. She jerked her arm away, but he caught her wrist. And then gently, Chuck pressed a kiss on the mark.

She held her breath, savoring the feel of his lips where she had hurt just a few hours ago. He looked up at her, and she could see the pain in his eyes. "Don't keep doing this to us," he pleaded.

"I'm trying to fix it," she rasped.

"I don't know what else I can do to show you we don't need a baby to be happy."

"Stop lying," came her firm response. Blair turned her back on him. "Just stop."

He would be thirsty. He would be so thirsty for scotch now, and four years ago she would have been afraid. Chuck would be thirsty and she would have panicked that she had pushed him one too many times.

But right then, she just could not bring herself to be afraid.

"I love you," he said, as if it was accusation.

She closed her eyes.

"I love you too."

There was no sense denying it. This was how marriages ended.

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

Part 3

This was not how his marriage would end.

This was not how his happiness would shatter.

This was not how he would lose his wife.

He glared at the quiet way she moved. He used to adore watching her in the menial little tasks she could do to distract herself. When she had agreed to have a baby with him, she also agreed to put aside looking for a job. Blair Waldorf Bass was left with everything that a high society woman would do to occupy her time—charity work and waiting. Now here she was, exhausted and depressed, and she placed clothes into her bag.

But they were happy. They were so happy.

He worked, and she was beautiful in those charity events. Not once in his life did he ever think he would be twenty six, hard at work, with Blair waiting for him at home. He doubted if she ever predicted the turn in her life that brought her here.

He loved this life. This was not going to break them apart.

Even if the very prospect was like a vise squeezing his heart.

She placed another dress inside her suitcase. It infuriated him. Chuck stalked over to her and slammed the suitcase closed. She barely had time to jerk her hand away so the cover would not crush her fingers. Blair turned to him, her eyes brilliant and pained, and he hated that she was hurting. If he could fix the hurt, he would.

"I'll be in the hotel, Chuck," she said.

"You're not leaving," he told her, his voice firm, brokering no disagreement.

But she could always disagree with him, and he could always forfeit. Not this time.

Blair looked up at him and he could see the pain her decision was giving her. "I think it's time you review this deal, Chuck. You're on the losing end." She sat heavily on the edge of the bed, as if the very words exhausted her. "You're a businessman. You already know when you need to dump unprofitable stocks."

He was businessman. But she could never question that he was a husband first. Over the years he'd proven it. "You're asking me to forfeit on this too," he said.

Blair shook her head. "I'll forfeit," she offered. "While you're young enough that getting married again isn't such a big deal."

Not a big deal.

Chuck pushed the luggage off the bed, sending the bag and the clothes to the floor on a heap. She made no protest when he took its place beside her on the bed. He wrapped his arms around her. "Are you less in love with than you were when you married me?"

"God, no!" she sobbed.

"I'm more in love with you than I was when I married you. I'm more in love with you that I was yesterday, more in love than when I asked you that question two seconds ago," he said softly.

She burrowed deeper in his arms, into the nooks and crevices she always settled into in their embrace, and it was preposterous to him that she could think of leaving when they fit together so well.

"Then you're not leaving. The only reason I'll accept is if you don't love me anymore."

She sucked in her breath. "That's insane. You know I'm never going to stop."

And he did. He was there. Over and over when he tried to make her stop, when he tried to turn her away. She held on so tight the way he was doing now.

"Then we stay together."

"Even if we never have a baby?"

His heart clenched and screamed at him. "Even if we never have a baby." Somehow he would learn to live with only himself and Blair. That was more than what other people had in a lifetime.

"Liar," she whispered.

"I want to try. Help me," he said, burying his nose in her hair.

He felt when her body lost its tension. Chuck lay down on the bed with her holding onto him, gripping his shirt and her leg thrown over his. She was fooling herself if she thought she could ever leave this.

By the end of the week, Chuck had entrusted the company to his uncle—the first time he had fully surrendered the reins to his father's empire since he took over the company eight years ago. Even during his honeymoon, or all the trips they had taken afterwards, he had kept close tabs on his father's inheritance. But this trip, for him, was different. Chuck Bass stunned Manhattan with a formal leave of absence from Bass Industries.

If she was right, and they were fast approaching an end, they would not go gentle into the death of their marriage. Against the dying of the light, they would rage and fight tooth and nail to survive. This was how Chuck and Blair would face the end like the faced the beginning, stubbornly, passionately, with a tinge of desperate need that sent them clutching at each other, catching their breaths.

When their private plane touched down in France, Chuck sat forward in his seat and extended his hand to his wife. Her eyes flickered to his palm and gave him a small smile, then placed her hand in his. "Are you ready?" he said, his voice smooth, slick and just a little challenging.

She returned with a playful grin and answered, "Always."

If this would not work, he thought, then he would make sure the memories they made were worth coming back to for the decades he would spend alone.

He surprised her with the Audi that waited at the hangar. Their luggage was loaded at the back, and he held up his hand when more were carried. "We're leaving the rest here." And he turned to his wife. "We'll get anything else we need along the way."

When he spied the sparkle of intrigue, he knew he had won this battle at least. "Where's the limo, Bass?"

He smirked, then flashed a key hanging from his finger. "I thought we'd drive our way across the continent this time."

She laughed, and the sound thrilled him. "Do you even know how to drive?"

He shook his head with his mirth. "Just because we can afford to pay someone to chauffeur us all over Manhattan doesn't mean I can't take the wheel myself."

"Well, Bass," she said as she sat in the passenger seat, "it looks like there are still some things I need to learn about you."

Seven years together and there was still a lifetime of little discoveries to make.

"You do know that it would be easier to backpack than to take a car," she said idly as she rested her head back in the seat.

He eyed her with a faint trace of derision that he was sure delighted her. "I can only slum around so much." It was a trip that was about the two of them. He had never driven more in his life.

They started in Paris and never even told her father than they were in France. He woke her at five in the morning and they strolled to a bakeshop to buy breakfast. And they ate it on the way back to their small motel.

"Now I know why you chose Best City Hotel," she told him thoughtfully.

Chuck eyed his wife, then asked, "Why?"

She shrugged. "It makes a difference when we're out of Manhattan and we're not us."

She was right. In Sukhumvit, drunk out of his mind, he had not been Chuck Bass the way he would have if he had been in he were in the business district hiding out in a Bass hotel. But he disagreed with one thing. "We're more ourselves now than we were in New York."

In New York, she was Blair Waldorf Bass, who lived a perfect enviable life—with a handsome, young husband who was rich and obsessively loyal the way no one ever suspected he could be. In New York, she was Blair Waldorf Bass, who threw fundraisers for children's charities because her life was already so complete that she could afford to think of others.

No one ever saw Blair but him.

Their motel was small and sparse, but they could glimpse the Eiffel Tower in the daylight while they drank wine and made love in the morning. When she melted above him, and her thighs gripped his hips in full abandon, Chuck swore he could live forever in bread and wine in this little motel and he would not complain once.

In the Louvre he pulled her along with him and lost their tour group. She had looked up at him with slight exasperation.

"I wanted to see the Monets," she pointed out.

He had pushed her back against the white wall beside a statue he could not stare at for too long, and he just knew that security would spy them from their surveillance cameras. Someone would come, and soon. But her breaths were fast and shallow, and he could see the excitement winning the battle in her eyes. So he said, "I love you."

And she said it back, pressed her body up and against him, and accepted his tongue when he kissed her.

They stumbled back to their tour group, laughing at the small phrases they caught from the security guard who had shuffled them back towards where the other people were.

In Amsterdam, she wanted to go biking around the city. Chuck arched his eyebrow at her and said, "You will never see me bike."

And his wife, the bitch that she was, had shrugged and said dismissively, "That's fine. I doubt you would be fast enough. Only Lord Marcus has ever beaten me biking."

Chuck found himself on top of a bicycle the very same hour, pedaling through the city like a teenager, or an old man. How far he was now from being the CEO of Bass Industries. Then again, that was the very point, he thought. They passed by an unassuming house and found out it was Ann Frank's, and she insisted they stop.

By the end of the afternoon, he had beaten her to their inn and he had won a bet. And so that night he took his wife strolling through the red light district.

Just before they slept, she stepped under the shower with him and held onto his shoulders as he pressed her back on the tiled wall. Blair's legs wrapped around his hips. A cry of satisfaction flew out of her mouth when he slid inside her. She rose and fell above him when they made love, and the slapping sounds that their skin were drowned by the running water.

"I don't want to take anything away from you," she whispered as she traced circles on his wet skin.

Chuck held her up, still inside her body, then bit at her neck. "Then you won't leave me."

He had all the answers, even if it was just a repeat of everything he had said before. She was exhausted, and so was he. But you never gave up on love. They soaked the sheets on bed when they stumbled on it with their dripping hair and wet skin. He looked down at her and her teary smile, and felt himself grow harder.

She felt it too, he could tell. Her lips parted, and she swallowed as she fixed herself, spreading her legs wider and urging his hips forward with her hands. And time, it was she who said it for them, "I love you."

The Audi was useless when they departed for Venice. And his wife did not hesitate to tell him, "I told you so." And in his frustration, and partly because Blair looked delicious in her off shoulder yellow peasant dress—that should really not be called a peasant dress because it cost seven hundred dollars—Chuck stole a gondola.

She laughed at the sheer exhilaration as he rowed and flexed muscles he did not know he had, only to discover that the boat they stole had a motor installed. They were in a small gondola, along the canals and then into a way that was devoid of any other gondola. And then her laughter calmed, and she narrowed her eyes. "Chuck Bass, you did not steal a gondola!"

He smirked, and said, "No I didn't. I paid the guy to rent it to us."

They stopped near a side street, and Chuck jumped onto the street first and extended his hand to pull up his wife. He strolled with her, and she pointed out the crumbling buildings that made him sentimental even if he had never been to Venice before.

"They're romantic even if they're deteriorating," she commented of the ancient white gates that were half-gone, decayed by the water.

And the comment struck such a thread of fear in his heart that he pulled her with him to a dark alley. She looked up at him, and he could see it in her eyes. He released the breath he had been holding, then cupped her face with his hands. He leaned down and kissed her lips.

There were no tourists in sight, and they were young and in love. She took his hand and pulled him deeper into the alley. Her hands fumbled at his belt, and she easily freed him to her sight. Chuck glanced towards the street to ensure they were alone. And he hissed when he felt her mouth wrap around him. He gripped the wall behind him and looked down, found it illicit the way he could glimpse her full lips as she took him into her mouth.

His eyes rolled back in his head when he felt her hot tongue wrap around him. Her inner cheeks massaged him, and then he felt her hands squeeze on his balls. He exploded in her mouth with a grunt. Chuck took his time to recover, and then he kissed her mouth, tasted himself on her lips.

"Thank you," he rasped.

And then he was kneeling on the ground, with her pretty yellow dress around his head and legs over his shoulders and he licked and thrust his tongue into her. He heard her guttural cry when he flicked his tongue over her sensitive nub.

She held onto him so tightly as they strolled by the Doge's Palace, and Chuck held her hand so tightly he could not believe that once upon a time, he thought they would ever lose who they were if they ever walked hand in hand. He kissed her temple and felt the faint perspiration that gathered there.

He paid a boatman to take their rental back, and hailed another gondola to take them to the house from where they rented a room. The ambience was family, and it was his favorite out of all the places they had slept. After a heavy meal, he stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

"Imagine a lifetime of this," he said, his voice thick, his embrace firm. "We'll make love in every city in the world."

The breeze blew and he smelled the Venetian canals in the air. The city was beautiful, but he closed his eyes so the only sensation he would be aware of was his wife's presence in his arms.

"There are still so many left we haven't seen."

And she agreed, because she loved him, and he was trying. He buried himself inside her that night, over and over, on the balcony floor. The stars and the moon were high above them, and he delved so deep inside her that for long moments he could not even tell where he ended and she began. She held his gaze, and swallowed, meeting his thrusts with her body so he would know that she was right there along with him for each and every pump of his hips. When he spent himself, and she broke into her climax, she kept her eyes open and she accepted the burning fluid that poured from him until it dripped from her to the floor.

Someday, they would run out of cities. Someday, they would have visited all the towns that mattered, and hopped on all the islands they could.

That day was not today.

tbc


	4. Chapter 4

**Part 4**

"Mr Bass, your wife is here to see you."

Chuck looked up from his seat at the head of the conference table. He nodded at his secretary, then excused himself from the board meeting. "Gentlemen," he murmured, then buttoned his suit jacket as he stood. He looked out the glass walls and saw Blair bundled up in her winter clothes, then picked up his pace.

"Blair, did you walk?"

She nodded, her lips trembling with the cold. He drew her close to him then hurried to his office. Blair always did enjoy walking in Manhattan, and she loved doing it during the holidays.

"You should have called for the limo."

She shook her head, and he helped her out of her moist coat. He opened a hidden cabinet from the wall and took his own winter coat out and bundled her in it. "I couldn't wait," she gasped.

He knew better than to suggest anything else. When Blair was possessed with an urgent need to spill her news, it was most usually news that benefited him. They had been in their flight back to New York when she shook him awake to tell him, with her teary eyes, about her epiphany.

"I want to stay," she had whispered to him. "As long as you'll let me." He had closed his hand over hers and told her to prepare for a lifetime. "I just want you know, when it comes down to it, you'll have a reason to quit and I won't ever get mad."

And it was enough for him, because come hell or high water, there was no way he would let go of the love of his life. Baby or no baby, this was it for him.

Stubbornness paid off in the end. Best inheritance he ever got from his father.

He won.

She brushed the snow out of her hair, and fumbled with her gloved hands to open the zipper of her bag. When she lost her grip, she bit at the ends of the gloves and pulled them off. Then she grinned up at him, because it was something Blair Waldorf Bass was not supposed to do. He returned the grin with a smirk, then plucked the gloves from her hands.

He arched an eyebrow, and she gave him a fat smile. "I will own you after this."

He took her hands in his and rubbed them for warmth. "What else don't you own about me?"

The rhetorical question made her happy just as he was sure it would. His wife was as predictable to him and he probably was to her. He had no doubt she was right, and whatever she had in her Chanel clutch would actually make her own him more, if such a thing was possible. His mother's diamond glinted on her ring finger, and he waited with bated breath.

She drew out a white envelope and handed it to him. He reached for the envelope, and she teased him by pulling it away.

"Give it," he said.

She gave him a sly smile. "I want a new house."

The request was easy to grant. Bass Industries gave them enough independence to buy anything they wanted. But the penthouse in the Bass Highrise was close to his heart, and he was a little hesitant at the prospect of leaving it. He did not bother to refuse, because he knew himself and in the end, he would give her what she wanted. Yet still he found himself, not refusing, but asking, "Why do you want another place? You love our apartment."

"It's too small."

Chuck snatched the envelope from her hand and slid out the folded paper. "I assume you've looked around," he commented, thinking the documents were a little too thin to be a lease.

And the Basses did not lease.

He unfolded the paper and glanced at the stationery address. His gaze slammed to her, and he saw her liquid eyes before she nodded. He looked down at the bottom. His throat had never worked as much. He opened his mouth but no sound came out.

Chuck took her hand and pulled her to him, then buried his nose, his lips, into her cold, snow-flaked hair.

"Are you happy?" he heard her say in a stifled sob into his shirt.

He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. "You even need to ask?"

"Can I get a new house now? I really want to keep my closet."

And he laughed softly, because it was all he could do. They had agreed that the mirrored closet would be the nursery, because Serena's twins needed a room of their own.

"I'll buy us a whole building," he promised her.

She pulled out of his embrace, and he brushed his thumbs over the tears falling on her cheeks. Blair reached up and did the same for him, and he was surprised to realize that he was crying too. "Was it the hormones? The doctor thinks it could be the hormones," she gasped.

If it was the hormones, he would dump a million dollars into that research in the next ten minutes.

"Or the trip," she said. "Maybe we needed a break."

Or maybe she just needed to know that he would stay, no matter what.

"Doesn't matter what it was. We're having a baby!" he told her in his most controlled delight.

"Finally."

She squealed and jumped up, wrapping her arms around him and he caught her up and whirled her around. He put her down abruptly. "I'm sorry. Are you dizzy?"

Blair shook her head. "I'm throwing a party," she said, a little guilt creeping in.

"Tonight," he agreed. "We'll block off Socialista or Butter, and invite everyone."

She bit her lip. "You know what they say about the first trimester. We shouldn't really celebrate too much. It keeps people from getting too disappointed." Her voice dropped. "Should anything happen."

He smirked, and already he was puffing up with pride. "That's a Bass in there, Blair." His hand easily went to her belly. "He may have taken a bit longer to get here, but now that's he's here, he's gonna stick around."

She stifled a grin. "Sounds like another Bass I know."

Chuck dropped a kiss on her lips, then told her, "Call Cyrus and your mom. Then tell Serena to tell all your friends to meet us in Butter." He watched fondly as his wife settled into the cushioned armchair and started dialing. He pressed the intercom. "Christine, book Butter for tonight—the whole place."

"Tonight, Mr Bass?" came his secretary's voice.

Any other day, he would have hung up. He hated repeating himself. "Yes, Christine. It's for me. Book it."

"Yes, Mr Bass."

"And send everyone home. Invite them to Butter at eight if they want to join."

"Home, Mr Bass? Holiday's not until tomorrow."

"It's a holiday today in Bass Industries. Tell the board I'm not coming back in there so they should just join us in Butter."

"Yes, Mr Bass."

"And Christine?"

"Sir?"

"You're doing a good job."

The secretary was silent. And then she stuttered. "Thank you, sir."

He looked up to see his wife eyeing him with an arched eyebrow. "You do know if you continue to be so sweet to her, she's bound to fall in love with you," she told him.

"Is she?" Chuck strolled towards her, then settled on the arm of her seat. He bent low and teased her lips with his until she accepted his tongue into her mouth. Blair's arms wrapped around his neck. "Good thing I haven't been acting like a giant asshole, because that's how I get special girls to fall hard."

She smiled fondly at the memory. "Oh yeah." Blair took a deep breath. "You've made me so happy, Chuck."

He kissed a burning path on her jaw, then licked the shell of her ear. "Have you called everyone?"

"Serena will call them for us," she assured him. "We'll let them have champagne," she offered, "when you announce it."

Chuck nodded, then abruptly stood, feeling his throat closing in on him. He strode to his private bathroom, then turned on the faucet. He cupped his hand under the running water and brought some of it to his lips. Chuck looked at his reflection in the mirror. He shook his head. He splashed water onto his face.

He could not breathe.

He loosened his bowtie, then tossed it onto the sink. He shrugged off his coat and let it fall to the floor. He drew in a deep breath, and his lungs could not seem to get enough. He drew in an audible gasp. Chuck's hands gripped the marble sink and he opened his mouth to suck in some air.

In. Out. He breathed. In. Out.

He stared at the reflection on the mirror, and could not believe that he was seeing himself, fucking hyperventilating, tears rolling freely from his eyes.

He was Chuck Bass.

"Chuck?" he heard her uncertain voice. He turned his head and saw his wife looking in on him with concern. "Chuck, are you okay?"

He bowed his head, willed himself to relax, willed his body to calm. "I'm fine," he hissed.

She walked into the bathroom and picked up a glass he used when he needed to brush his teeth. She filled it with the faucet water and handed it to him. Chuck reached for the glass, but his hand was trembling, so she held it up to his lips and told him, "Finish it."

He drank the contents, then nodded, breathed more easily. His shirt was ruined with the water. His bowtie was drenched. His jacket was likely crumpled. He met her eyes, catching his breath. "We're pregnant," he said again in disbelief. "We're finally pregnant."

"Yes, we are," she said tearfully. She drew him to her arms and held him. He clutched tightly to her arms. "And we deserve it. We really do."

"It's real," he said. "We're having a baby."

And he had been so proud. For such short notice, Serena managed to get eighty people in Butter, and everyone looked up when he rose with his glass of apple juice. "You can all have champagne," he said in jest. His audience laughed a little, and Chuck waved the waiters to refill the flutes. "Only two people not drinking here are Mr and Mrs Bass," he said out loud.

Serena's eyes widened, and she turned to Blair. Blair reached to cover her friend's hand with hers, and place a finger on her lips. "Let him," she said.

"Eleanor, Cyrus," Chuck said with a big smile, "you are going to be grandparents soon." He turned to Lilly. "And you're going to be a grandma again." And the words filled him with such joy he could not contain his big grin. "I finally got my wife pregnant," he said, for the first time letting people glimpse the long, difficult road to this announcement.

The applause warmed him, like he finally reached the finish line in a marathon. He raised his apple juice. "Here's to the best present a man can ever get in his lifetime."

"A baby," Blair mouthed.

Chuck corrected her, "A wife like mine." Blair rose from her seat and gave him a big smile, then drew him to her for a kiss. "The baby is a very welcome addition," he whispered into her ear, establishing, for her, what he had tried to do for the last year.

Their marriage first. A child afterwards.

And he was so very happy.

fin


End file.
